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New Hospitality House Would Provide Services for 150 Families a Year

Posted on: Monday, 3 April 2006, 09:01 CDT

By David R. Million World Staff Writer

A newly formed nonprofit organization is planning to open a new hospitality house to provide family-centered, home-like lodging and support services to families of patients from outside the area receiving medical treatment in local hospitals.

The Hospitality House of Tulsa Inc. facility will complement the Ronald McDonald House, which helps families of pediatric patients.

The new facility will host families of patients of all ages, said Broken Arrow resident Toni Moore, president of the new organization, and who has 15 years health care administration and finance experience.

Hospitality House of Tulsa's first public fundraiser is set for 7 p.m. Thursday at Southern Hills Baptist Church, 5590 S. Lewis Ave.

The Tulsa Praise Orchestra with guest Dave Boyer from Atlanta will perform during a concert such songs as "God Bless The U.S.A.," and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." A dessert reception will follow.

Organizers hope to raise $30,000 with the concert and foresee an annual operating budget of $60,000.

Moore said she anticipates the new facility would serve around 150 families each year.

"There's a need for more hospitality houses in Tulsa," said Glenda Love, executive director for Ronald McDonald House of Tulsa, and the first board member for the Hospitality House of Tulsa.

"One of the things I'm very aware of when I make hospital visits and encounter families from out of town is that they're in a crisis situation," said the Rev. Bob Green, Arrow Heights Baptist Church in Broken Arrow. "The Hospitality House of Tulsa will provide a great service for those families."

Brooke Gage, a Hospitality House of Tulsa officer, said, "I've seen caretakers in out-of-town families going without sleep and eating out of vending machines. That leaves them without the ability to cope, which affects their hospitalized family member."

Moore said her organization spent a year gathering statistics for a patient feasibility study. Major area hospitals provided numbers of patients and distances from their homes. She also received information from the Oklahoma Hospital Association and National Association of Hospital Hospitality Houses, said Moore.

"There are more than 25,000 patients who live at least 50 miles and up to 700 miles from Tulsa. The average length of stay in a Tulsa hospital is around four days, but in many cases that time is extended to two weeks, up to two months," Moore said.

She said a National Hospitality Association 2004 survey showed most hospitality houses in communities such as Tulsa serve families from 27 states in the U.S. and up to 10 foreign countries.

Hospitality houses meet the needs of people who can not afford out-of-pocket expenses associated with a medical stay.

"When you look at the trends in health care, especially the uninsured and underinsured, it doesn't take a long medical stay to put a family in financial crisis. The average motel room in Tulsa is around $50 nightly, and it takes another $20 a day per person to eat," Moore said.

"If you had to be with a loved one for two months, your out-of- pocket expenses could easily exceed $5,000, and that doesn't include your medical bills," she said.

It was partially out of a personal health crisis and personal experiences that Moore feels she's driven to open a new hospitality house in Tulsa.

"I was raised in a very small community and personally experienced my family facing a healthcare crisis when I was 17. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and was hospitalized and treated two hours away. Later, five weeks after my husband and I married, he suffered a serious accident, which resulted in emergency surgery one and a half hours from home and was hospitalized two weeks," she said.

Tickets for the "Big Band, Big Heart" concert cost $10 each and are available at Mardel Christian & Education Supply, Lifeway Christian Store, Arrow Heights Baptist Church in Broken Arrow and other locations. For more details on the concert, call 694-8888 or go to www.tulsahospitalityhouse.org.

Vision for a hospitality house nearly realized

An interruption during a study of scripture gave Toni Moore the idea to create a new hospitality house in Tulsa for families of out- of-town patients in area hospitals.

"I found myself in the middle of a Bible study when God shared with me a vision for ministry," said Moore, a Broken Arrow resident.

"I know such terms as vision tend to scare people, but for me, it was a deep impression and pictures of families needing help flooding my thoughts," she said.

She said her 15-year background in health care administration helped her recognize immediately that it would require huge amounts of resources, which she did not have.

"For six months I prayed, knowing what God was asking me to do was beyond what I could physically see," she said.

Moore speaks to groups, telling about her vision and how she has seen God make the provisions necessary for the Hospitality House of Tulsa to become reality.

Among those:

She and Brooke Gage, another officer with the nonprofit, attended the annual NAHHH conference in California as one of their first steps in creating a hospitality house.

There, they met a man who helps such facilities start.

He offered $200,000 in matching funds that would go toward a future capital project and offered to endorse a grant application to an organization with which he has significant influence.

On the flight back to Tulsa from the conference, a man sat in the empty seat next to the two women.

When he learned they wanted to open a new hospitality house, he said he and his mother stayed in a similar facility in Wichita, Kan. when his dad was ill and that it was a blessing to his family.

He said he is the regional program director for the Knights of Columbus Catholic Fraternity that helps such projects and is interested in helping with the Tulsa project.

The next morning, Gage met a woman who offered help as the two visited about the hospitality house idea while waiting on their sons who were taking golf lessons.

The woman said she's in upper management for a major appliance company and thinks the company would be interested in an appliance donation.

Three weeks later at the Arkansas Hospital Association meeting, Moore met a man with Nabholz Construction Co. who connected her with Ben Moyer, a top executive with the company.

He became a board member for the Hospitality House of Tulsa and said his firm would do all construction planning and budgeting as an in-kind donation for a future facility.

"God's continuing to put people in our paths to make this vision come true. It's all happening so fast. A project like this usually takes a lot longer. But, it won't be long now before we'll see the house being established," Moore said.

Residents aid efforts to open hospitality house

Several Broken Arrow residents and people with close ties to the community are key players in the organization that aspires to build a hospitality house in Tulsa for out of town visitors who have relatives in area hospitals.

They include:

Toni Moore -- president of Hospitality House of Tulsa, career in hospital health care administration and finance; corporate consultant.

Brooke Gage, LPC -- south Tulsa resident with children in Union Public Schools, attends Arrow Heights Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, instrumental in starting Hospitality House of Tulsa Inc.

The Rev. Bob Green -- pastor of Arrow Heights Baptist Church.

LaJean Roper -- Broken Arrow resident, semi-retired independent real estate agent.

John Herndon -- president, First National Bank and Trust Co.- Broken Arrow.

Dr. Leon Yoder -- physician with Gastroenterology Specialists Inc., offices in Broken Arrow.

Dan Beirute -- law partner at Winters, King, and Associates, BAHS graduate, south Tulsa resident, parents and in-laws live in Broken Arrow, mother is a Broken Arrow teacher.

"Many people from Arrow Heights Baptist Church serve in volunteer roles and support this project financially," Moore said.

Other board and advisory members live in Tulsa, Jenks, Berryhill and Owasso.

Source: Tulsa World

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